£24.6 Million in Ether Stolen as People Refuse to Learn Their Lesson About Cryptocurrencies

According to CyberScoop, hackers discovered a vulnerability in Parity Wallet, one of many services which offer bank account-like wallet services for users to park cryptocurrencies in. Exploiting the vulnerability allowed the hackers to escape with approximately 153,000 Ether in three separate transactions.

As the attack progressed, a group of white hat hackers (ethical programmers who look for security holes in software) caught on to what was happening. CyberScoop reported they were able to use the same exploit to protect approximately 377,000 Ether worth an estimated £57.7 million from the thieves.

The attack follows a separate theft of an estimated £7.3 million in Ether from trading platform CoinDash earlier in the week, though the attacks are far from the first to hit the Ether community: In June 2016, hackers attempted to steal some £40.8 million in the cryptocurrency from venture capital fund Decentralized Autonomous Organization.

While everyone claims to know someone who remembered they had 500 Bitcoin stuffed in an old hard drive somewhere, remaining heavily invested in the cryptocurrency market at this point would require ignoring or rationalising away just a few tiny flags. Those might include the time thieves ran off with millions in Bitcoin from underground site Sheep Marketplace, or that time a former federal investigator stole $820,000 ( £631,109) in Bitcoin from Silk Road, or that time an estimated £346 million in Bitcoin disappeared from trading hub Mt. Gox.

Perhaps if the surging world of cryptocurrency scams or continually furrowed brows at the SEC weren’t enough to make one think twice, they could consider Ethereum co-creator Charles Hoskinson’s recent warning to investors too many initial coin offerings had turned Ether and other cryptocurreninto a “a ticking time-bomb,” with people “blinded by fast and easy money.”